every year we love to make our own homemade ornaments to give to family, friends & teachers. this year mommy found this recipe for cinnamon applesauce ornaments & we thought we have to try them because nothing smells more like christmas than cinnamon! these ornaments can be hung from the christmas tree, used to
decorate packages, strung together to make a beautifully scented garland, or as great holiday gifts.
this recipe makes 12 – 14 medium sized cinnamon applesauce ornaments. it takes about 15 minutes to make and knead the dough, and 2 1/2 hours to bake, for a total time of 2 hours, 45 minutes. oh yeah, be prepared to get a wee bit messy!
ingredients:
1 cup cinnamon
1 tbsp ground cloves
1 tbsp nutmeg
3/4 applesauce
how to make cinnamon applesauce ornaments:
preheat oven to 150°.
in medium bowl, combine cinnamon, cloves & nutmeg.
add applesauce, stir to combine.
work the dough with your hands for 3 or 4 minutes until dough is smooth and ingredients are thoroughly mixed.
if the dough is a little crumbly, add a tablespoon of applesauce at a time to it until it is smooth and a bit sticky.
roll out dough to 1/3 inch thickness. It will be sticky, so be careful with it. You can use cinnamon like flour on your pin and rolling surface to stop it from sticking.
cut dough with cookie cutters. simple shapes like hearts, bells, trees and gingermen are easier to work with than cutters with complicated shapes.
using straw make small hole in top of ornament.
bake on an ungreased cookie sheet at 150 degrees for 2 1/2 hours
remove from the cookie sheet and cool on a wire rack.
decorate as desired. (we used glitter glue to make them sparkly)
loop a ribbon through the top.
voila, festive heavenly smelling ornaments to last the whole holiday season!
i'm sure you've heard us talk about our most favorite dessert place ever... the sweet boutique! well we go there so much that we've gotten to know the owner pretty well, her name is ms.christine & she makes the most magical creations you've ever tasted, smelt or seen! mommy & i were in there a few weeks ago having a special treat when christine said that someday i should come in to decorate a cake & she would bring her daughter in too because she knew we would get along great. well today was that day & we had the best time ever, we felt like real live fancy cake decorators! madi (ms.christine's daughter) & i became fast friends & had a blast picking out fondant color combinations for our cakes & ways to decorate our them. ms.christine had made up about 10 colors of fondant for us to play/create/have fun with. the major thing i learned is fondant letters are really really hard, i was going to try to do a word cake but then i decided shapes were more fun & easier. i really loved getting my hands "dirty", did you know when you work with fondant you put shortening on your hands like lotion so the fondant doesn't stick to you... i was super duper greasy, it was awesome! my favorite thing was getting creative with the fondant, i started mixing colors & making "marble" (that's a professional term) patterns. ms.christine was very impressed that i was thinking "out of the box" & coming up with so many ideas. we got to decorate our cakes in the middle of the shop where christine decorates her cakes & all the customers that came got to see what we were creating & thought our cakes were beautiful! all the staff there were super great too, they would give us tips & tell us how great we were doing. after about 2 hrs of decorating (playing) we decided our cakes couldn't be more perfect & we were done! ms. christine was so proud of us that she said we would have to come back again to try cupcakes or cake pops... whoo hoo, i can't wait! if you have time you have to check out the sweet boutique's website & see how amazing everything is there... http://www.tsbcakes.com/!
